CHAPTER 6

’The authorities were evidently of the same opinion.  The inquiry was not adjourned.  It was held on the appointed day to satisfy the law, and it was well attended because of its human interest, no doubt.  There was no incertitude as to facts—­as to the one material fact, I mean.  How the Patna came by her hurt it was impossible to find out; the court did not expect to find out; and in the whole audience there was not a man who cared.  Yet, as I’ve told you, all the sailors in the port attended, and the waterside business was fully represented.  Whether they knew it or not, the interest that drew them here was purely psychological—­the expectation of some essential disclosure as to the strength, the power, the horror, of human emotions.  Naturally nothing of the kind could be disclosed.  The examination of the only man able and willing to face it was beating futilely round the well-known fact, and the play of questions upon it was as instructive as the tapping with a hammer on an iron box, were the object to find out what’s inside.  However, an official inquiry could not be any other thing.  Its object was not the fundamental why, but the superficial how, of this affair.

’The young chap could have told them, and, though that very thing was the thing that interested the audience, the questions put to him necessarily led him away from what to me, for instance, would have been the only truth worth knowing.  You can’t expect the constituted authorities to inquire into the state of a man’s soul—­or is it only of his liver?  Their business was to come down upon the consequences, and frankly, a casual police magistrate and two nautical assessors are not much good for anything else.  I don’t mean to imply these fellows were stupid.  The magistrate was very patient.  One of the assessors was a sailing-ship skipper with a reddish beard, and of a pious disposition.  Brierly was the other.  Big Brierly.  Some of you must have heard of Big Brierly—­the captain of the crack ship of the Blue Star line.  That’s the man.

’He seemed consumedly bored by the honour thrust upon him.  He had never in his life made a mistake, never had an accident, never a mishap, never a check in his steady rise, and he seemed to be one of those lucky fellows who know nothing of indecision, much less of self-mistrust.  At thirty-two he had one of the best commands going in the Eastern trade—­and, what’s more, he thought a lot of what he had.  There was nothing like it in the world, and I suppose if you had asked him point-blank he would have confessed that in his opinion there was not such another commander.  The choice had fallen upon the right man.  The rest of mankind that did not command the sixteen-knot steel steamer Ossa were rather poor creatures.  He had saved lives at sea, had rescued ships in distress, had a gold chronometer presented to him by the underwriters, and a pair of binoculars with a suitable inscription